The United Kingdom hosts the grande dame of government rationed health care (a.k.a., the ‘public option’). It is a broken down system which most Americans would denounce if they had to give up American health care and go with the UK’s National Health Service.

Because the system is run by bean counting bureaucrats who decide what kind of people and what illnesses are worthy of investment, the system is plagued with incredible delays. And in medicine delays kill – as a new cancer study points out:

Up to 10,000 people die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for preventable deaths.

Earlier detection of symptoms could save between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in England a year, Prof Mike Richards will reveal this week. The higher figure is nearly twice his previous calculation, which put the figure at about 5,000.

Richards has revised up his estimate after studying the three deadliest forms of the disease â€‘ lung, bowel and breast cancer â€‘ which together kill almost 63,000 people a year.

“These delays in patients presenting with symptoms and cancer being diagnosed at a late stage inevitably cost lives. The situation is unacceptable,” Richards told the Guardian.

Emphasis mine. 10,000 needless deaths a year, in a country the a fraction the size of America. To put that in context the entire Iraq war resulted around 4,000 Americans killed over 5 or so years.

This is Obamacare. This is Pelosicare and Reidcare. This is the naive preference of liberals. This is the result of bean-counting death panels.